notes from night #3; Subway musings

We had a pretty good show tonight. It wasn’t perfect, but we were definitely batting in some runs.

Personally, I had a pretty mediocre first act, and this was purely my fault. I confused one entrance with another and walked in on Alli, and we just stared at each other for an awkward few seconds, and then I reacted as if she forgot her line (when in reality it was me who was to speak), but then I remembered where we were and we recovered it well enough. It probably wasn’t blatantly obvious to the audience.

In my monologue on Act 2, Scene 5, I skipped over some of the best lines, but at least that was neither harm nor foul to any other actors. In any case, that won’t happen again. This scene has been running really well so far, but just that little bit of extra polish will make it faintly sing in the hearts of our audience for the rest of their lives.

I opened up Act 4, Scene 2 with the redundant “Sir Topaz! … Who calls there?” Not only that, the lighting cue was messed up, and we hauled the cage and stool onto the stage under full lights. Then I realized, as the scene wound down – I still had chewing gum in my mouth! Augh. I was eating my lunch during the interminable Act 3, Scene 4 and thought I’d pop in some to freshen my breath. I hope against hope the gum wasn’t visible, because that would have taken people out of their suspensions of disbelief faster than you can knock over a prop table backstage.

It’s looking good for next week; we’ve got a lot to build on! I give our shows so far a B+, C+, and tonight was an A-. And I’m really fussy, and my assessments are biased. It’s not as if the entire show hinges on Malvolio; there’s also this other little story with mistaken identity and people falling in love. =) j/k It’s similar to what has been said about Titanic, “It’s about this salvager who takes this old lady out to the Titanic’s resting place – oh, and there’s a flashback.”

Simon (our lighting and sound controller) gave me a lift home – thanks, dude! He has this awesome 2006? Corolla that senses the weight in the front passenger seat and uses that to decide whether or not the airbag should be turned on (so children under a certain weight will be protected from an airbag deployment), and it also starts chirping at a passenger who takes his seatbelt off in transit. He’s studying computer engineering at SMU, and works at Subway.

We were talking about subs, and he asks me, “What do you like on yours?”I say, “Oh, everything – except olives.”“Oh, you’re one of those people. You get everything and then you can’t get the sandwich closed.”

Hmm! That’s – quite literally – food for thought. My last Classic Italian BMT (at a different location than his, but still) was a dripping, drooping mess. Next time I’ll consider taking some things away, or asking them to go easy on the lettuce, or something like that.